If you have serious goals that you want to accomplish through dieting, simply saying that you will just eat less probably won’t cut it. Successful diets are ones that give a solid structure. Knowing what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat are all important factors when planning out your meals in addition to knowing how much to eat. You don’t need to be on the BEST diet to lose weight, you don’t even need to be on the third best diet to lose weight, but you do need a set of guidelines to keep yourself consistent and healthy when you head to the grocery store.

Reducing calorie intake can be a helpful start to planning a diet, but it’s no substitute for having a clear and reliable nutrition plan that keeps you disciplined. Meet with a health coach to find a plan that works for you and your body. Just because a celebrity lost twenty pounds eating eggshells doesn’t mean you will too. Take some time to research diet plans like paleo, the mediterranean diet, or whole-thirty and find a plan that you can stick to.

Health Is More Important Than Weight

What is the point of a diet that causes you to lose weight but leaves you feeling miserable all the time? Most people go on diets for the sake of being healthier, and this goal should be the priority when making food choices. It is absolutely possible to lose weight and end up less healthy than when you started. Starving yourself will cause yourself to drop a waist size, but it is important to employ diet strategies that are sustainable in the long run. A good diet is more than just ‘7 easy hacks to drop 50 pounds,’ it should involve planning that is oriented around living a healthier lifestyle.

When you lose weight, eat a variety of foods that give you the nutrients that you need to survive. Make sure you are eating nutrient rich vegetables and not just romaine lettuce drizzled with caesar dressing and make sure you are getting in sources of fat and protein. Fad diets are exciting, but be weary of any product that promises weight loss without asking you to change your eating. Consult with a fitness professional if you are unsure where to start.

Staying Motivated Is Key

For some people, being healthier means having the energy to play with their kids; for others, that means being fit enough to play a sport that they loved when they were younger. Everyone wants to be healthy, but not everyone has taken the time to discover what really motivates them. So many people lose the motivation to live a healthier lifestyle when they haven’t taken the time to find that deep drive. Discovering and maintaining this lasting motivation is the necessary first-step to a successful health-journey.

Diets are an important component to this journey. We are made of what we eat. We tend to separate our mind and our body, but to a large extent, we ARE our bodies. If our bodies are not healthy, that gets reflected in how we feel every day. Changing the quality of food and our food habits are paramount to living healthier lives.

Exercise can help maintain the motivation to be fit because it gives you a tangible measure for how capable your body is, but the important part is that you have that personal why. Having a support group can be important for sustaining that motivation, especially as your willpower drains from weeks of dieting. Finding people to share in your ‘why’ can help you stay accountable to your own health goals and lead to lasting, positive change in your body.

There Is More To Dieting Than Just Food

So much of our daily routine and social habits are built around food. We catch up with friends over lunch, we celebrate our successes with a nice dinner, we decompress after a long day with a drink. Many of the person-to-person bonds that we have are reinforced over food, and it can be a little disorientating when we decide to cut some foods out. The biggest obstacle to dieting tends to be the relationship that we have with the food. It is hard to eat healthy and go out for dinner and it can be just as hard to maintain the same social habits when we are dieting.

Committing to a healthier diet means working around a constant stream of social temptations.This can be inconvenient, but it doesn’t mean that you need to turn into a recluse to eat well. Be aware that you may need to consider your own habits and life-schedule when budgeting your food for the day. To start, pay attention to your body when you are hungry. Try to distinguish between when your body is hungry because it needs food and when your body is hungry because you are bored. Listen to your body and think about food as a way to fuel a healthy life rather than a way to entertain yourself when you are watching TV.